


Paper House, Paper Hearts

by infernoforte



Category: Day6 (Band)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Modeling, Neighbors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-23
Updated: 2018-10-28
Packaged: 2019-08-06 09:36:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16385504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infernoforte/pseuds/infernoforte
Summary: Like the rain, Jae is hateful while indulging incoherent belief.P.s. This is a Sunday Morning AU (the song Jae sang on radio).





	1. My Summer in Your Kiss

**Author's Note:**

> Don't know when I came up with this messy work, it's for entertainment so please bear with it <3

When Chloe was in New York, she basked herself in the sun as long as there were no rain. Between katzenjammer from the traffic at the suburbs, telephone lines cutting in and jutting out, in the aroma of a cup of newly made Americano, nothing was even more immaculate except for occasional drizzles gently touching the skin.

 

**1**

 

Jae was a newcomer there. For as much as Chloe knew, Jae carried a guitar. He played it in the lobby, in the unit next door, at the sundeck joined by banisters lining the edges, sometimes he'd even sing. Jae was another warm country to stay. Jae was another river rolling deep.

 

They talked, when Chloe sat next to her coffee table one night, thinking about life. Long forgotten tabloids scattered on reflective surface, petals fallen from roses rekindling collections of the past. Jae was singing, without his guitar. Strange.

 

At one stage he leaned on the railing, breathing in dusk and exhaling agony. "I thought I could sing about New York city as well." Vestiges of classical music and arguments through thin walls were mixed in a pot to distract his consciousness.

 

Chloe spared him a glance, unsure of what to say.

 

"Mademoiselle?"

 

"Sir, I believe you've just moved here and we don't know each other." Which she regretted right after.

 

Jae talked about how Chloe can say that later, on a humid and rainy Sunday morning, because in fact, they're strangers. Yet his eyes flickered and his syllables fickled. "Hey, I want to talk to you."

 

She stilled.

 

"Through songs." Then he sang.

 

 _Sunday morning rain is falling,_  
_Steal some covers share some skin._  
_Clouds are shrouding us in moments unforgettable,_  
_You twist to fit the mold that I am in._  
_But things just get so crazy,_  
_Living life gets hard to do..._

 

It was the first time she willed to stick her palm out and catch the droplets she once told herself to loathe.

 

**2**

 

At one stage, it came up that Chloe never knew Jae's real name. Jae was just Jae, all glossy under the blinding sun of New York city.

 

It's sunny on Friday, _tgif_ , she thought. Jae was outside playing his guitar as usual, humming. The notes were bits from a song called Strangers, performed by a band with the abbreviation B.Y.E. (Before You Exit). Now, Jae's sense of music was not anything ambiguous like the beginning of a book.

 

Fastening the lock, she glimpsed at the bag of fairylights and polaroid holders with strings in her hand. It's a great time for a new cover, a new profile for the projecting platform joined with the one next door. At one point, it looked much duller in the presence of Jae. So Jae was art as well as it counted.

 

Little did any of the congested clouds, the doves resting on terraces, the million dollar city skyscrapers know, Jae had stars in his eyes. Those stars, you can't see the edges, they weren't redundant but it seemed like they belonged to somewhere else too.

 

Jae was sad, Chloe told herself. He tried to hide it, by any means Jae on the brighter side was no one more than a happy-go-lucky Santa's child. He stared at the rising sun and dusk, he wore a smile on to coat the ashes and smoke coming from the metropolis, it's almost as if he played his guitar because he wanted to shut noises out. The outside of Jae wasn't Jae, maybe the inside of Jae was yet to be found, but perhaps, the inner Jae had warm fuzzies topped with iridescent flakes every one loved.

 

While she pushed the slide door open, Jae stopped singing. He's probably in his reminiscence, searching for a place only to slam into another unfittable puzzle piece of the picture. The clusters of dusts were obnoxious and summer was a little appealing, albeit nothing impresses them much.

 

Later that evening, when the car alarms were wailing and tabloids flying across the streets, Chloe had somehow an idea about Jae's behavior. He's writing lyrics in his head, letting it reflect into some sort of certified bullshit she would call feelings, for it carried something. But taking closer measure of Jae's poker face, she gave the assumption up.

 

If anything, Jae looked like the person who plays instruments in a rock band. From versatile fingers to top-notch song scores, pitches of par excellence and soft eyes. He had his radio on, figure slightly swaying alongside what played.

 

The scent of Americano (Jae's favorite) now loitered in the air, half hanging and as though chasing the concocted touch of red and orange, unsure if it's dawn or dusk, though it's six in the evening. His guitar was now resting under glassy skin, fingers plucking the strings and ornamenting the lonesome town beneath. It felt like a tropical summer night at the equator, with the backdrop of the nightscape just flitted everywhere except his eyes.

 

They didn't talk, but Jae was still Jae. And he started joking out of nowhere, like how a riot his manager was while he worked as an instrument tuner years ago, exaggerated moments and quelled laughters, darkness creeping in and fluorescent lamps diffusing out. All Chloe did was offer her wistful grin to turn in, either surreptitiously or widely. It doesn't make a difference. Like how it never made much of a difference whether Jae sang or not, he still felt distant, and occupied with inveritable chores, a curfew or two.

 

In the end, Chloe fell asleep in her only velvet settee out in the open. Only to wake up a few hours later with the suburb's traffic slightly loosened, and a note stuck at the plastic clip of a polaroid picture around a glomerulus of fairylights, saying. "Dozing off in the open is a pretty venturesome practice, especially with company." To which she frowned hard at, and shifting her gaze to the right, where Jae's property was.

 

It turned out that he's still up, a tuning fork in hand, fingers fiddling with the pegs of an electric guitar, still the same demeanour but in such sense of tranquility. It's two in the morning, there was a downpour. She shivered and stood, while he looked up.

 

"I expected the city to go off." He said quietly. Along the marble flooring at the outer side, now magnified by puddles of rain water, gusts of draught creeping in. The temperature was calamitous, if not under Jae's burning gaze.

 

"Nothing artificial really does."

 

Midnight continued with gentle strokes of strings and chords moving through dented sound boxes, some occasionally applause of pitter-patter and antaennae from televisions cutting off signals, idle whiff of cigarettes and clicks of compulsive lighters. One thing was precise, only because Jae sang a sonderingly regular song at midst of the chatter.

 

**3**

 

There's always something about Jae's songs. They're a mixture of calamity, conception and signified correlation. Post-reminder of tardiness greets the filthy air trapped indoors, some invisible hinges now squeak, Jae was reading through flipboard, a mug of macchiato ready at the edge of his fingers.

 

"Tell me something entertaining." It just came naturally from him, still flipping through a ludicrous page counts of tabloids. His macchiato was already evaporating as he played with the handle.

 

"Well there's Pressure Law, Boyle's Law and Snell's Law. While here in New York we have Chi Muoi Lo."

 

"That's not funny." Jae shrugged, but then he trailed back again. "But you are." And then he laughed, however incomprehensible that joke was.

 

"I don't see why."

 

"You're beautiful." He said. "Even under aritificial lamps."

 

"So how is that actually funny?"

 

"Yeah, I don't know why it's funny. It's just truly illogical, horrid."

 

To that, Chloe shot him an unsurprised glare, uncomplicated shrug, while impending emotional snow storm follows. For that instant, they were bound to be stories from drizzly street corners to Jae's past auditions and workadays, to Chloe's makeup artist freelancing, to their congested topics and subtitles between viscious words from the city and insusceptible skyscrapers there.

 

"So Jae, well..."

 

His gaze penetrated her, all burning down into sly curiousity-if it wasn't it could be amusement, though it hadn't a reason to be. Downstairs the gates were swinging and screeching, inducing a lump half hanging on their palates, the sky wasn't all clear but it didn't rain either, it was another Sunday morning with buzz of electric guitar and polaroids tangled in fairylights.

 

"Why're you here in New York?"

 

The streets were swarmed in an instant-or a tick of the hour hand-she wasn't sure, while Jae's sight was now some metres away from the avenue, projecting beyond the reflective glass of skyscrapers beside their apartment and as Chloe went stray with her thoughts, Jae hid the smirk behind his lips.

 

"Because the weather is good."

 

"Really, on days like this?"

 

"Guitar strums and pitter-patter, nothing can be really better."

 

Time continued chasing away a long day, at one point it started raining. When she closed the cover of her planner it's already dusk.

 

Her chin tilted, soft citylights in her eyes as she ushed to look through his. By all means Jae had dark eyes, deep ones. Like the rain, they didn't show when they're coming for you, they just did. Chloe felt a prick somewhere, maybe she had imagined it up. Belligerent summer storm stopped past dinner, under glaring candlelight the clock stroke twelve times and tea was served by the insusceptible figure locked between long memories.

 

She probably didn't remember whatever happened afterwards, but roughly there went an imprintment of Jae, playing classical music, then jazz, and maybe rock from bands on his stereo. It's another hot summer night, not pouring as expected, and those syllables just rushed too fast and too hard.

 

"Jae, can you sing Sunday Morning one more time?"

 

**4**

 

There was another morning, a Friday morning to be precise, where Jae was seemingly more upbeat than usual. His nerdy glasses were on and his acoustic guitar laid somewhere against the railing, some silver coated banister it was. From the corner of her eye Chloe observed a mug of tea, Earl Grey indulging her buds. Strange with no coffee.

 

Jae had an old, stained Reader's Digest in his fingers this time, it was thicker than the usual ones. Stranger without flipboard.

 

The strangest thing of all was when he picked up his guitar and fiddled with the strings, lips curled up into a distant smile as he began to form the notes, the words, the motion.

 

 _Hey Jude, don't make it bad_ ,  
_Take a sad song, and make it better._  
_Remember to let her into your heart,_  
_Then you can start to make it better._

 

It dawned on Chloe that some of the songs from Jae liked burning words and engravement beneath her skin, like the sort a typewriter would punch into rigid pulp. Though round and round she told herself that Jae was a stranger, he did nothing but sang (sometimes she even wishes he'd stop), that he's incomprehensible to an extent that he's ephemeral, she visioned the songs as though the notes were lingering somewhere behind her eyes.

 

She wondered what really took him here, what made him a warm country to stay, what made him a river rolling deep.

 

That was, of course, before Jae fell asleep, wasted at the balcony.

 

**5**

 

It's the MSC modeling event in summer, what Chloe's sparked instantly up at the thought of, exactly it was held a little early, the asphalt was piled and the air dense, she frowned hard at the monstrous poster pasted across the facade of her favorite exhibition studio, it's pretty unimpressive.

 

The runway was already set with flash lamps, the curtains pulled up and red carpet laid out. It's funny how things were appealing and appaling at the same time, this was New York to begin with.

 

Brian was up under that usual, million dollar entourage(it's Brian Kang after all). The situation was easy, Brian was the model, she was the make up artist. She was supposed to clear things up and bring about a hubbub in the crowd when spotlights drain upon him.

 

He's a beauty, really.

 

"I'm counting on you today, do make me really pretty."

 

On the other hand, Chloe grinned. "Kang Younghyun, how many times have I said you look flawless even without make up?" Her eyes flicked up, meeting his and as she averted her gaze, he caught her amidst of fine powder, and glittering dust.

 

He chuckled.

 

"It's the MSC modeling event, not a masquerade ball."

 

"Sure, sure. Everyone needs something to cover blemishes. That's why I'm here."

 

Silence trailed between air molecules. Out of her conscience, she hummed softly. His brow twitched. "Is that Sunday Morning?"

 

"... I reckon."

 

"What do you mean by you reckon?" He laughed.

 

"Recently my neighbor-he moved here a short while ago-has this hobby of carrying his guitar around. He sings. A lot. This is the one from him I remembered." Chloe never noticed Brian's expression that's blanked out so much that he left a mark on the cup he grasped.

 

"What's... his name?"

 

"I'm not too sure. He calls himself Jae."

 

"He must be cool." To that, she didn't take much interest. Minutes passed and she had forgotten what Brian had said. The event later on was blockbuster, not to mention it rained, poured to be precise when it ended, good enough.

 

That night, she entered her abode and straight off to bed, not even pondering to switch the lights on, or at least letting fresh air in through the slide door that opened into the balcony, falling half-asleep with the soft murmur from next door, in the faint aroma of brewed cappucino, gentle verses from her favorite classic. So Jae had interest in classic, too.

 

 _Why she had to go I don't know she wouldn't say._  
_I said something wrong, now I long for yesterday._  
_Yesterday, love was such an easy game to play._  
_Now I need a place to hide away._

 

There went the last week of summer.

 

**6**

 

There wasn't always a pretty climax. Those were voluminous piffle, small cover ups. It's September tomorrow, and Jae was different today. It wasn't the morning routine Jae followed, the air smelled of sharp alcohol smothered in post-tardiness.

 

It was a dark Sunday morning, the heavy clouds hanging as if below observation towers, Chloe contemplated on cutting up apples and having them for breakfast and calling it a day. It kept her avid, how Jae's slider was still locked and no signs of static resonance from an electric guitar.

 

It came rushing at her that evening, smacking her hard in the face when Jae stepped out for the first time throughout the day, rounding up bottles behind his coffee table that Chloe never realized, swinging his keys.

 

As plain as it was, she had set forward. "You're out for the night?"

 

"Yeah."

 

And that's it, spontaneous downpour accompanied by the screech after Jae paced inside.

 

When Jae came back that night he had brought along a woman, smelling of expensive perfume and sounds of sharp end of sandal heels digging into the cement followed. Chloe slipped a note under his flower spot the same night, when she could clearly hear them softly talking, thin walls penetrated by thoughtful whispers. It wrote. "Like the rain, you're hateful while indulging incoherrent belief."

 

The cicadas seemed to have stopped singing since, invisible backdrop tumbled over and tales had fallen apart. She flashed a grin of disbelief, before falling between thick sheets, telling herself that tomorrow she'd get up in prosaic, acoustic riffs and pitter patter.


	2. Of Alcoholics and Crammed Suburban

**7**

 

It's soon declared that Jae's inner side was not hidden, it's more to the fact that it never existed when he stopped showing up through September, through October. It gradually came to a point that Jae never wore his nerdy glasses anymore, that he never played his guitar anymore and never sang a note since. Jae was a mess. Jae hadn't believed in the Sunday morning story he told, or made up. Jae contemplated on giving some things up after so long of struggling to save them.

 

It then reminded her that Jae was never another warm country to stay. Jae was never another river rolling deep.

 

Today she found a note stuck at the same polaroid picture the last summer night, where she fell asleep exactly the same spot the downpour had her, consumed her, where Jae had set that tuning fork down and turned his stereo on instead. "This is Park Jaehyung you wrote to, not Jae. If Jae is hateful, Park Jaehyung is worse." It wrote back.

 

Jae. As in Park Jaehyung.

 

She let out a sigh, long and wheezy. On the days before, the downpour could've gotten her intolerance to stay out in the open, but things were different, things had been different the moment Jae moved into the unit next to her. It's been swirling and whirling and jarring and gagging and everything else besides.

 

Things were good. To be precise, really.

 

**8**

 

It came to this point, where Chloe thought of a truck of haps she could've thought of earlier(but we don't talk about that now). That Jae used to get up early on Sunday mornings, took double shots of espresso and play his guitar. But the Park Jaehyung she just knew weeks before started sleeping in when it came to Sundays, saying that he didn't want to get up finding no fairy tales like he'd sung of existed, or that his guitar broke and he had to surrender twenty-two hours putting it back together. Albeit in truth, it's his own life he wanted to fix.

 

Jae had always sung a lot about Sunday mornings. Jae reminded her that although the weather wasn't good, the song was. But Jae was also long lost, no glasses, shots of vodka replaced Americano, trails of silence replaced strums, dead leaves replaced rainwater, molded concrete and an empty chair replaced him.

 

Agony spoke louder than rustles of leaves in autumn that year, it's as if the city was deaf, or blind to the pain, flitting it elsewhere. The days were good, the days were fine, the days were golden under tunnels of sleepy branches and wilted leaves. The barks were pelted until their skins showed, dusts were trapped everywhere that you didn't know which window to open so that they'd go away, just go away if they ever would.

 

Sometimes Jae went out, but most of the time he stayed in. It's really bad but bad shit wasn't his concern, she thought. Perhaps he walked to the nearby grocery store and picked things up, then he's going to come home again and surrender his twenty-two hours, calling it an unconventional curfew. It's not, to be precise again.

 

She still had no clue about his existence in the first place, or his absence right here right now. Until one day Chloe inhaled a throbbing, familiar scent of espresso. Caffeine. She shifted her curtains, wheeled the slide door open.

 

He was sitting there, earphones stuffed deep and gaze blank in a way he had never been. After so long of sitting-beside-you-and-I-had-to-break-the-silence, "So is everything good? The past weeks and months?"

 

He turned.

 

That instant, Jae had a pair of empty eyes(not that they weren't before). "Good things don't come with time, good things come with price." Was all he said.

 

**9**

 

There was a long time in November where Jae only worked on repairing his guitar, his danged guitar. Always out of tune, always had broken strings, always this, always that. He kept running, like he'd run away from singing, from the songs, from everything until he crashed into himself. Emaciated figure, and he was still running. He ran to the music store too, buying endless strings and discarding them again because they broke, continuously.

 

Somehow he didn't seem to remember anymore, albeit he still walked down the street to get his usual toast in the morning, still drank americano at some point, but he didn't sing. A Jae without music, a Park Jaehyung without himself. Paper house, paper hearts. Bullshit conception.

 

So every once in a while Chloe would still stop at his doorstep, pondering whether she should believe in Sunday Mornings after all. And every once in a while she hoped for the rain to fall again, hoped for Jae to sit at his balcony casually, flip through tabloids and one of them might land on his coffee, and it's still fine if he didn't sing, it's still fine if all he did was, being Jae.

 

**10**

 

It was another modeling event, in November, on the next year. New York city must be weary by now, the streets were still bustling and it was at least 10 degree celcius, since it's nearly winter. Chloe didn't know how the hype of MMG company dug its way out of the obnoxious cold, or how Chelsea Silverstone could wear a slit dress, a slit dress, in that kind of outdoor runway show. It's particularly insane, and again, modeling events were too fancy, fancy in a way that things became unimpressive altogether.

 

It was still New York, was still as crammed as a suburban would be.

 

Through the days, Chloe had thought, were only confusement, and particles, the ones that bombarded everything askew, powder on Brian's outfit, glitter scattered on the floorboards, vague imperfections and atop of all, silence. She couldn't exactly hear the pitter-patter, regardless if they were there or not.

 

Brian Kang was there, up under the million dollar entourage. He was still the model, she was still the make up artist. She was still supposed to clear things up and bring about a roar in the audience.

 

Things hadn't changed.

 

She worked, her fingers tocking out concoctions, brushes and concealers and powders and everything in between. His brow twitches suddenly.

 

"Sorry, did I hurt you?"

 

"No. It's just... I just thought of something." Brian closed his magazine, the Times New Magazine, he was on the cover.

 

"Chloe, you can't blame on society when you yourself are society, right?"

 

"I... Well..."

 

"That's what people say, anyway."

 

Fashion weekend completed through a weave of rainwater and puddles with bits of asphalt, Chelsea Silverstone never missed a step on MMG's haphazard lay out, and all Brian did was fling his gaze somewhere in the herd of people before they roared, it was so ideal that it began to bore.

 

When she returned home, the air was refreshing, the metropolis was still as crammed but the scent of Americano was there. It had been long since she thought things were strange. It must be the café downstairs, brewing Americano because they had nothing better to offer.

 

But it caught her off guard, when Jae stood, singing, he was actually singing, at the sundeck. She had to blink thrice to feel sure.

 

 _The town is cooler now,_  
_I think it's sick of us._  
_It's time to make our move,_  
_I'm shaking off the rust._  
_I've got my heart,_  
_Set on anywhere but here._  
_I'm staring down myself,_  
_Counting up the years._  
_Steady hands just take the wheel,_  
_Every glance is killing me._  
_Time to make one the last appeal,_  
_For the life I lead._  
_Stop and stare,_  
_I think I'm moving but_  
_I go nowhere._  
_Yeah I know that everyone gets scared,_  
_But I've become what I can't be._

 

Again, Chloe wasn't sure what happened afterwards, but she knew they talked that whole night. Dinner was long forgotten and the more the draught crept in, the more she wanted to stay around. It's a habitual thing, like how she grew to believe in what Jae sang about, like how she couldn't stay away from him, it's a habitual thing. They talked and talked and talked, he sang too, smile distant and penetrating. The day was good.

 

**11**

 

The next morning Jae was packing, swinging his keys and no glasses on. Chloe could tell this was Jaehyung, not really... Jae. A different thing takes place today, as he slid his door open, took in an ultra gasp of morning breeze carrying the faint scent of hydrangea.

 

He turned for the first time since their last, Autumn? So Jae went hiatus for approximately twelve months, four seasons. "Do you want to go to Paris?" He asked, as light as the crumbles in his hair.

 

So they ended up somewhere near Eifel Tower, hours later, in a rented substandard apartment. Jae was spontaneous, he was too, before. He had bought a rose from the flower shop downstairs, got a jar out of the bottom of the kitchen table and filled it with overwhelming water, and stuffed it in.

 

Chloe didn't remember much, but then that night, during teatime, they sat under the stars at the terrace, tabloids flying as they were in New York. Paris was different in a way, it didn't have that kind of traffic she resented, it didn't have smoke, nor dust.

 

"Back then I had a colleague, Brian." Jae had started, hair in his eyes. "We're good, things were good. I played the guitar and he sang all the time, played the bass and spilled coffee over his shirt. He's a worrywart."

 

In another sense, she thought of Brian, Brian Kang. That must be why he tensed up back then, because he recognized Jae's song, Jae's favorite song. Chloe remembered Brian talking about his past career in an interview, about his bass, about a duo where his drummer was somehow an oblivious teenager of sort, about losing four members altogether because he was so wrong, so wrong.

 

"Were you both in the band?"

 

"You can say that. Everyone there called him Young K, a star there, he never dimmed out."

 

"What happened?"

 

Jae took an extra long gasp of air, as if holding himself up against a load of destructive recollection. "I loved him, I loved him where I shouldn't."

 

"That's what happens everytime you tell society something new, they loathe things which weren't their way. You can't blame on society when you yourself are society." He laughed, staring at the ceiling, Chloe stared too and noticed so many cracks that they seemed scary. "Brian said hurtful things, but I didn't mind, he said 'Jaehyung, I'm really not gay,' of course he wasn't, he had a girlfriend. My best friend."

 

"And Wonpil would say hyung, he's just crazy as always. Junhyeok would agree wholeheartedly. Sungjin stared at me, blank eyed and Dowoon continued with his remix and drumming and composing and everything that didn't matter more than the fact that we're starting to break, which we did the next day because Sungjin, coincidentally he had to become the CEO of some company I didn't know existed and Wonpil and Junhyeok wanted to focus on their entrance exams and Dowoon basically didn't care anyway. So I left too. All that's left was Brian, Dowoon the catatone, his bass, and his croak of a voice in the studio. I laughed over that for months and it's still absurd. A band named Day6, with only one member and a half left."

 

Chloe listened, and listened, contemplating what she would say, what she could say. But then she didn't, it was better that way. Jae had long known that Brian was here in New York, that was why he shut everything out, that was why he never asked about the MSC modeling event or anything since Brian Kang's face was showed on the avenue's largest screen.

 

"It's really crazy in a way. He is now Brian Kang, not Young K, not Younghyun. It's crazy, it's scary, how people forget so fast, how they get tired so easy."

 

Chloe thought what he said was true, so true it burnt half a hole through her, enough to turn everything upside down, downside up.

 

He waited until the last struck of the clock, until he turned to face her. "So what about you? Why do you hate the rain?"

 

"Because everytime it rains, bad things happen."

 

"Really?"

 

"I was wrong. Because one time in high school I lost my part-time job from hours of traffic, the reason was the rain. My friend got into an accident when I was older, because it rained and he couldn't see. Most of all is because I get all wet and it makes me really frustrated." She paused.

 

"But then I somehow let it go."

 

Jae had nodded, smiling. He wanted to touch his guitar, but it's miles away at home.

 

"You brought someone back home, the other day." She closed her eyes. "Did you do that for your feelings, too?"

 

"Nothing happened, I just couldn't bring myself to do something I don't want to do. We just sat there and drank coffee, talking about Younghyun, talking about the woman next door I loved." Jae let the syllables slip out of his lips meticulously, corners lifted. So it's about her, about Chloe, not Younghyun, it's her.

 

"I said loved not because I don't love her now, only because I love her more than I did, it's something deeper than love. I can't stay away any more longer."

 

Long after silence poured over them, Jae went to call for bed, the coffee table swayed from being abraded, she stopped him. "Do you want to try something?"

 

He sat down. "What for?"

 

"You know, take the pain away." She bent forward and kissed him, hard on the lips. It tasted like metal, then cotton candy, she could see glitter, not the ones from her make up box, they're real glitter.

 

To Chloe, some things didn't really matter much. Jae or Park Jae Hyung, she saw the written stars inside out.

 

**12**

 

One time they were back in New York, it was pouring. Chloe thought the weather forecast was a great big lie since the beginning, Jae thought the frown she displayed was amusing. The roof plates were clanking at this point, the paint was peeled and skyscrapers almost dissolving. It's going on and on and Jae just started a conversation out of nowhere.

 

"So are you in love with Jae, or Park Jae Hyung?"

 

"This is hard, you know, it's like asking me if I like cheese cake or the cheese."

 

To be exact, she loved both of them. The Jae in veils of emotional storms, swish and swoosh of fire and choking smoke, they're beautiful in such way that Chloe had to close her eyes to envisage them. That was the most precious of mediocre details about New York, and Jae, and her, and life.

 

"Jae..." Chloe called out, with a second thought she squeaked. "...hyung."

 

"Yeah?"

 

"You're not dropping... or selling your guitar, are you?"

 

He smiled, bright as the typical sun on a regular Sunday morning.

 

"Not ever. It's always a part of me. It's something I carry through life, some place I call home. It makes me the Jae you've ever known."

 

That one time, Chloe knew. Jae wasn't entirely Jae, but then he was still Jae, the Park Jaehyung she had ever known.


End file.
